Security Levels

CDR RAY EVANS, USCG (Ret.)

Transcript of video
interview with Commander Ray Evans regarding his Coast Guard service and
that of his friend, Douglas Munro

Ray Evans' enlistment
photo.

Note: The following is a
transcript of a video interview with Commander Ray Evans, USCG (Ret.) about
his service in the Coast Guard and about his friend and shipmate, Signalman
First Class Douglas Munro, USCG. Evans participated in the mission
at Guadalcanal where Munro gave his life in action against the Japanese.
Munro was awarded the Medal of Honor for that action and Evans was awarded
the Navy Cross. The interview was done in 1999 as part of a video
documentary on Douglas Munro.

TRAVIS: The most difficult
question other than, how did I talk you into doing this is, how do you want
to be identified?

EVANS: Well, I go by Ray but it's
Commander Raymond J. Evans but, but I go by Ray.

TRAVIS: OK.

EVANS: I sign all of my checks and
letters and everything R. J.

TRAVIS: So, if I put your name on the
screen, do you want to see Ray or Raymond?

EVANS: Well, if you want to be
completely accurate, it would be Raymond.

TRAVIS: Raymond.

EVANS: That's what the Coast Guard has
me.

TRAVIS: OK. Now you weren't
always. . .

EVANS: I hate, I hated signing my name
Raymond J. Evans all through the Coast Guard but, dad was Ray J. So, I
didn't dare take Ray.

TRAVIS: I'm William Early Jr., but
everything's Bill. So, the Coast Guard has me as Bill, so I know. You
weren't always an officer.

EVANS: No, started as an enlisted in
1939, as an Apprentice Seaman at 21 dollars a month.

TRAVIS: How did you join the Coast
Guard? Tell me about that.

EVANS: Came out of high school and
looked for a job all summer in 1939 and it was a very poor time for jobs and
, , went to the Coast Guard and they said they had not taken a recruit in 7
years and that was all through the depression of course and , they called me
back in September and said, "are you still interested? We've got 7
openings", and I said, "yes I am". And that's how it
started.

TRAVIS: You were, where were you
living?

EVANS:
In Seattle and, when I got to the, federal building on September 18, Doug
Munro was there and he was one of the 7. So we went to, signed up.
Went to Port Angeles together to the air station 'cause there was no
training station and, I guess we were there about a week when they said that
the [CGC] Spencer's on
the permanent transfer from Valdez, Alaska to New York and they need 7 crew
members to fill out their crew. I was the eighth volunteer. Doug
was in the seventh. But, one guy dropped out so, I got on and we
became the "Gold Dust Twins" on the Spencer.

TRAVIS: You and Doug.

EVANS: Yeah, we were together so much
then. In those days, the soap was called
"The Gold Dust
Twins" you know and they had the twins on the label and that's what
they called us and many times, couldn't tell us apart. I mean, we
didn't look a like but they would mix us up... and that's how it started.

TRAVIS: You , you're, were you a
signalman also?

EVANS: We , we were both , ,
interested in , becoming quartermasters and, when, the war started when, in
the early days, the Coast Guard decided it was time to get their signalmen
back. You know, they give them up during peacetime, but they have them
during wartime. They have to communicate with the Navy. And so
we both requested and became signalmen strikers and eventually third class
signalmen. Which didn't mean a lot of money really. If you
remember the pay scale, it's 21, 36, 54. First class seamen was 54
dollars a month (whoooo). When you made third class petty officer, it
was 72. It was great. (laughing) But, it went a long way. It
went quite a ways.

TRAVIS: Now when you guys joined up, I
was talking to Doug's sister, Pat, and she was telling me that she came and
saw you guys off when you headed to New York.

EVANS: She probably did, but I don't
even remember that.

TRAVIS: Oh. . .

EVANS: Yeah, she probably did.

TRAVIS: Did you, did you know Doug
before then, had you met him?

EVANS: No, never had. No.
The interesting thing is, that I did live in Cle Elum when I was 5 years
old. Well, I was younger than that. My dad was in charge of the
telephone office in Bellingham, I mean in Cle Elum and I was born in
Bellingham, but, he ran a telephone office for several years while I was,
oh, 3, 4, 5, 6 years old. If you go to Cle Elum today and go down the
main street, there's a little brick building that's Pacific Telephone /
Telegraph Museum now. That was his building. But no, I didn't
know Doug before we met.

TRAVIS: So, what happened after you
two took off for New York? You went through the [Panama] Canal?

EVANS Yeah, and arrived in New York in
November in a snow storm. But anyway, we ended up at Staten Island,
Staten Island at Pier 18 and, that's where we were based out of and started
doing weather patrols, neutrality patrols, etc. . . . . Um, eventually, you
want me to keep rolling on here, eventually the Navy took over the old Army
transports and we're going to man 5 of 'um I think with Coast Guard
personnel. Beginning of the war, very early, before we got into
it actually and, so, we decided we would apply to go over to the [U.S.S.] Hunter Liggett [AP-27/AP-14]. We harassed
Harold Berdine who was the Exec [Executive Officer] on the Spencer
until he finally, he said, "I can't let both of you go at once"
and we harassed him until finally he just gave up and said, "O.K., get
out of here" and he transferred us both and we thought we were going to
become ship's company, but when we arrived, we found we were assigned to
Commander Transport Division Seven staff.

So, we became staff signalmen and Dwight
Dexter was personnel officer for the staff. He was a lieutenant
commander, lieutenant commander, Coast Guard. All the rest of the
staff officers were Navy because they didn't believe, the Navy felt that it
took someone, familiar with convoy operations to head-up the division.
So, we had Commodore G. B. Ash [who] was our transport division commander
and we had the Hunter Liggett [and] the [USS] American Legion
[AP-35; not a Coast Guard-manned transport; she may have had some Coast
Guard personnel aboard, however] and the [USS] Joseph T. Dickman [APA-13]. All three, Coast
Guard-manned vessels [see note next to the American Legion reference
above] and we went from ship to ship to India, eventually, carrying British
soldiers on the American Legion and the Dickman. It came
back while Hunter Liggett spent all that time in Philadelphia Navy
Yard and when we got back, back aboard the Hunter Liggett, we did
amphibious training with Marines off of New River in North Carolina for
several weeks and ended up in the convoy to the South Pacific. And on
the trip to India, we were 250 miles south of Cape Town, South Africa when
we listened on Sunday morning and heard, bombs on Pearl Harbor. So, we
were in the war.

TRAVIS: What was that like?

EVANS: Uh, well, we had expected that.
It was not unexpected to have it happen. Just where it happened.
We had , the convoy had been routed to Bahia, Brazil and way across the
South Pacific pass the Ascensions in order to avoid the German submarines on
the, on the west coast of Africa and that's why we were due south of Cape
Town coming north. Went down around and came up to get away from them.
That's why we were there. We went on to Bombay and came back and, came
back in time to do, do the training with the Marines in New River and then
in a big convoy to the South Pacific. Ended up in Wellington, New
Zealand. The staging area for Guadalcanal. We Americans tend to
find humor, even in the middle of war. In the middle of the worst
conditions.

TRAVIS: Did they ever get Champagne
Charlie?

EVANS: I don't think so. I don't
think so. Unless they got him on the ground at Rabaul eventually, you
know. Well, we were fortunate, in a way, to have a Australian
coastwatchers, the coastwatcher on New Georgia, for instance, would tell us
when they were coming. We had twenty-minute warning before the planes
ever got to Guadalcanal. And so, he would tell us how many, what they
were and what to expect. And that really, that really helped.

TRAVIS: I've read about those guys
that's just amazing story.

EVANS: Yeah, yeah they were. The
coastwatchers were an amazing bunch of guys . And they packed these big
heavy radios. They didn't have the nice light things that we have
today; they were great big unwieldy things, and the batteries were unwieldy,
and it took about ten or so of of of their native carriers to carry all the
equipment, you know. And they would set up and and were apprehensive
that the [Japanese] would find them at any minute, you know.

TRAVIS: Uh huh.

EVANS: And some of them were; they did
lose some of them.

TRAVIS: OK. So you're back at, you're
on Guadalcanal, you, ah, what I was going to ask you, what did you guys have
to eat?

EVANS: Um, C-rations, mostly.
And one time they after things well . . . At one point I think in about
October the Navy sent in a construction unit which had a signal gang.
And they took over all the duties of all the signal crew. And all my
signal people were dispersed back to their vessels except I stayed there
with Commander
[Dwight] Dexter [USCG]. And they they put me with Martin Clemons
working with Australia. Umm, they had a twenty-six foot schooner with
a three-man crew, Malaysian crew. Had a three cylinder Gardner diesel
engine in it. Did six knots wide open. Umm, and twice I took umm a
Marine reconnaissance squadron all the way around to the other side of the
island to follow DeClark's mission. And the second trip is when I got
came down with malaria. And after that they shipped me out in November
the, I couldn't take it anymore. So I went back to the Hunter
Liggett.

EVANS: (nodding) Yeah. What
happened to me was we ran ran out of atebrin and quinine on that trip, on
that reconnaissance trip. And if you didn't take your atebrin, you
ended up with malaria. And there was a lot of dysentery and dingy
fever and it, it's jungle, you know. It was pleasant where we were, we
were on the plantation [Lever Brothers coconut plantation], on the beach,
and it was, umm a lot like, you're familiar with Hawaii, and Tahiti and
places like that. But when you got back behind the airfield, into the
jungle, it was it a mean place. It was a mean place.

TRAVIS: Tell me about this hut that
you and Doug built.

EVANS: Oh that was simply an army pup
tent put over some, some framing, just a form of shelter from the rain.
And we built it at the base of the signal tower. (laughs) It was
convenient.

TRAVIS: I've heard it described as a
palace compared to the . . .

EVANS: Well no, no, no. It was
just, just a place with a coupl'a sleeping pads laid down on the floor and a
roof over it, that's all. It was not , it was not a palace.

TRAVIS: Well, how did you guys end up
taking Marines into the beach?

EVANS: (sighs)

TRAVIS: When . . .

EVANS: I'll tell you this the
best I can.

TRAVIS: OK.

EVANS: I recall a major came down and
a battalion major came down and I don't remember his name [Major Ortho L.
Rodgers, USMC] I don't think I ever knew his name really. He, he
talked to Dexter and the next thing I know, the commander is telling us that
Doug and I -- that they were going to send this battalion, I guess it was a
battalion of Marines, to land umm at Point Cruz. As I understood the
situation, they had tried to cross the Matanikau River. And the Japanese
were well entrenched on the other side of the river and they [the Marines]
couldn't get across. So they sent a contingent up into the mountain,
across the back of 'em to get behind them. And the, and the plan was to send
these by water four miles across and land them at Point Cruz behind the
Matanikau River, beyond it, and, and get them in a pincer movement.

Ahh, and so they came; we loaded up a, I
don't know, ah ten or twelve infantry boats, and five or six tank lighters
and under covering fire from the destroyer [U.S.S.] Ballard [AVD-10] made an amphibious landing. Umm, unfortunately, we were
supposed to land at the head of the cove and we found the coral would not
allow us to do that so we had to make an abrupt right turn and land on the
beach. At the side. And we warned the major that immediately
after they left the boat he should have his men make an immediate left and
go to the head of the, to to follow their plan. But unfortunately he caught
a mortar immediately after he got off the boat and he never gave that order.
So they went up the wrong hill and the wrong place right into the Japanese
and eventually they ran past the Japanese lines and then had to fight their
way back through it to get to the beach.

In the meantime, all our boats had gone back
to the base except the major had requested we leave one boat behind, for
immediate casualties. And so I stayed, I elected to stay behind and I
had a coxswain named Sam Roberts from Portland, and the two of us were
laying to in this LCP. Unfortunately, we laid too close to the beach
and the Japanese fired an automatic weapon at us and hit Roberts, hit all
the controls, the vacuum controls on the boat. I slammed it into
"full-ahead" and we tore out of there and I tore back to the, to
the base, four miles, and when I got to the base, I pulled it out of gear,
but it wouldn't come out of gear, so we ran up on the beach, which is a long
sloping sand beach. Ran up on the beach the full length of the boat
before it stopped.

Umm, and Roberts unfortunately, they got him
in an evacuation plane to New Hebrides, and he died on the way, very sad.
Then, no sooner had that happened then word came down that they [the Marine
landing force] had to be evacuated. And so back we go. And this
time, Doug said, we had two air-cooled Louis machine guns between us, with
rotary drums if you remember, you've seen that kind, so we elected to stay
on one boat with the two guns and act as kind of a covering fire, while we
sent the rest of the boats in to load these people. And they had lost
a, I think they had twenty-five casualties and then they had about
twenty-five that were wounded, and we got all the wounded and all the all
the rest of them off and, the last tank lighter load started out to sea and
we followed him and found one tank lighter around the point was stuck on the
beach and couldn't get off. So we sent that tank lighter with us in to
tow him off and we acted as covering again. And we were having no fire
from beach whatsoever. It was relatively easy. And he got him
off and both the tank lighters headed off to sea and we headed out to sea
behind him. And I saw that, and Doug was facing forward, and I was
standing up by the coxswain looking back, I saw this line of waterspouts
coming across the water, and I yelled at Doug to get down, he couldn't hear
me over the engine noise, and it hit him. It was one burst of fire.
And that's how he died. And that's how it happened.

TRAVIS: I've interviewed three of the
Marines you guys got off that beach, and they can't say enough about the
Coast Guard.

EVANS: We just did a job. We
were asked to take them over there, and we were asked to bring them back off
a there, and that what we did. That's what the Coast Guard does.
We do what we're asked to do.

TRAVIS: How is it you think that, I
agree that's what the Coast Guard does, and I know that's what we do, how do
you think we get these, you were what twenty years old?

EVANS: About.

TRAVIS: And Doug was twenty years old?

EVANS: Uh huh.

TRAVIS: And I look at, I look at kids
that work for me now and they're just baby-faced kids and I look at Doug's
picture back then and he was a baby-faced kid, and I'm sure you were to, how
is it you get these twenty year old kids to do something like that?

EVANS: I don't know. Umm, what do,
what do we pay for an F-16 aircraft?

TRAVIS: Millions.

EVANS: Yeah, and we've got a
twenty-two year old kid flying it. And he does a helluva job. I
don't know. I don't think every kid that age could do it, but it
seemed like most us were about that age, you know. Our sergeants and
Marine sergeants were older, some of the corporals were older, but all of
the, all of "the guys" were in their twenties and there was a . .
. I hate to say this but I feel there was a different feeling back then,
there was more patriotism, there was more love of country, there was more
concern for country. Today I feel that that's faded. Quite a
lot. And it, it's disappointing. But, that war was fought for a
cause. We'd been attacked. Every war since then has been one
somewhere else, fighting for some other country, for some cause that a lot
of people don't understand. And don't agree with. And that's
caused a great deal of dissention, I think, in our country.
Unfortunately. And, and since World War II, our military has
experienced times of times of strength and times of weakness, which right
now we're pretty weak, actually. And that scares some of us that like
to feel the country would be better protected if we had more defense
spending. And that's enough of that. I'm not, I'm not a
politician I'm not gonna get into that. (laughs)

TRAVIS: OK. Do a tape change
here real quick.

EVANS: You know, you grow up
pretty fast, and you given responsibility, and you, uh, are required to
carry it out, and it's uh, it's uh,...I don't know. I guess we grew up
pretty fast---sigh!

TRAVIS: Explain to me a little
bit---and, and this is just because I don't understand. How many Coast
Guard people were there on each one of these landing crafts?

EVANS: Three! We had uh, we had
uh,...well, actually two; we had a coxswain and an engineer manning each
boat. A hundred league of that --- thirty-five landing crafts hanging
in davit, each davit had two boats. Uh, two sitting in a cradle one on
top of the other, and then one hanging over the side. And we had
thirty-five of those, and than we carried uh, two tank-lighters on the uh,
hatches of two of the holds were, was the tank-lighters those were like
fifty-ton jobs; big twin diesel engines to carry a Sherman tank. Uh,
the landing craft we carried, probably uh, oh, I don't know,...they were
twenty-foot long about. They probably carry uh, twenty, twenty to
twenty-five people in each one, but they had, uh, a coxswain and a engineer
assigned to each one. When the, when the, the fleet . . . After we
landed the troops of Guadalcanal, the word went out to all the auxiliaries
that they would leave one boat and one crew behind when they left. So
we ended up with about half uh, half Navy and half Coast Guard on the beach.
And, uh, I don't know, perhaps, uh, fifty men, and ah, uh, Commander Dexter,
and we had uh, young ensign [ that ] was his exec, uh, and I don't even
remember his name. I think he had another officer there to, but I
don't remember him either. Uh, 'bout a week after the landing most of
the Navy guys (chuckle) uh, went back to their vessels. They left the
boats behind, but most of them went back to their vessels. So we ended
up with essentially, perhaps, ninety-percent Coast Guard operating the naval
operations basin and a few Navy people. And, uh, that's just the way
it happened. They were, uh, uh,...I have no idea. I don't want
to say on camera (chuckle)! You'll have to cut this part out, Bill!

TRAVIS: Okay.

EVANS: Uh, it, it just didn't work
out. They didn't . . . . the two services just didn't work
well together --- in that particular instance anyway. That close it,
closer ordeal, and uh, perhaps, they resented having, uh, Coast Guard
officers over them, I don't know. But, but as I say, we ended up with
mostly Coast Guard in a naval operating base, and uh, it worked well.
Wasn't easy. The ships had come in, and uh, and they worked night and
day unloading them, you know, and uh, Japanese Bettys [Mitsubishi G4M
"Type 1" land-based, twin engine, naval bomber] would come over,
and the torpedo-bombers would come over, uh every day, uh, more than once a
day so that you were interrupted constantly. You'd work for three or
four hours, and then, uh, get the alarm sounded, and then, the uh, the ships
would scatter, and the boats would be left all over (chuckle) hell's
half-acre. Uh, it was, it was a hectic time.

TRAVIS: How was it that you ended up
on the same boat with Doug when you went back in there, 'cause there was
three of you --- you said there was a coxswain, and you and Doug?

EVANS: Oh! When we went back to get
'em?

TRAVIS: Uh huh.

EVANS: Well, because we had the two
guns, and we decided we probably needed some covering power to, to, covering
fire for these guys coming out on this little tiny beach. And there
was a very narrow little sand beach, the jungle came down within five or six
feet of the water. So there were hardly any beach when the boats' bows
were up right into the, almost into the brush! Uh, so we would layoff
kind of behind them, and uh, and act as a covering for 'em, and uh, and as
they filled up, uh, we would, uh, we would, just send in more boats, as
we pulled those off the beach and send in some more, and we'd just stay
there as a cover, and uh, that was the best way to do it, uh at least the
way we saw it. We only had, had the only two pieces of armament in the
whole deal, you know (chuckle).

EVANS: No. Not to my knowledge. There
may have been, but if there were I never noticed it! But it was, uh . . .

TRAVIS: When you first went in and
actually landed on the first time were there any uh...were you in a
fire-fight then or...?

EVANS: No! No, uh...

TRAVIS: You were telling me about the,
the fox holes.

EVANS: What they did...Yeah, what they
did as, as the Marines explained it to us, and I don, I don't know, if
you've run into this talking with these three Marines, but they said they
went up...as they went through this fringe of jungle, and then they opened
out into this slopping field, and they went up this field...The [Japanese] built
fox holes, [whereas] we built trenches, they build vertical holes that
they stand in, and they put a cover over them --- like a lid. And they
[the Marines] marched all the way up the hill past these things, and then
they [the Japanese] flip the lids back, and the Marines are up there, and
the Marines had to fight their way back through them to get back to the
beach. Uh, that's where the causalities occurred. They had a
hard time. They, uh, laid down some kind of a signal, uh, for an
aircraft to see so that they uh, saw that they had to be taken out, you
know. That's, uh, and that's when we went back to get 'em.

TRAVIS: Uh, the way they explained it
to me is they did signal for aircraft, and they were...the aircraft ignored
'em because they thought they were Japanese. They didn't--they
didn't know there were any Marines over there...

EVANS: Oh! Is that right?

TRAVIS: . . . and the other two groups
that were gonna come across the river for the pincer movement, never made
it...

EVANS: No, they didn't make it.

TRAVIS: . . . so these guys are hung
out to dry. . .

EVANS: So they were really hanging
out, and that's true.

TRAVIS: . . . and they credit you guys
for seeing what was going on...and saying, we'd better get these guys out of
here.

EVANS: I...I don't know how we, how
they got the word back, but as I said I got back with Roberts right after I
got back. Uh, Dexter came running out and uh, yelled at the two of us,
and said, we gotta go back and get 'em out. The word's come down that
they, they have to be evacuated they're in an impossible situation.
And so we gathered up all the boats and all the crews again and away we
went. Right, turn---practically turned around and went right back!
Uh....(sigh), I don't know how he got the word? I had always thought
that it came from the aircraft. Maybe, maybe some way it filtered
through. Who knows, ha!

TRAVIS: I think eventually somebody,
they said eventually somebody figured out it was our guys over there...

EVANS: Yeah.

TRAVIS: . . . but at first they were
ignoring...

EVANS: Yeah! I see where they
would. No, it was a plan that---that really failed. Uh...,and I
don't think it was a bad plan, it just uh, was one of those things; some 'em
work, some 'em don't. And, uh, the fact that the major was killed
immediately when he stepped ashore I think uh, was a key to the thing
because he had did not have time to communicate with his junior officers to
tell 'em what to do. And so, the Marines will charge and that's what
they did, they charged! (chuckle) Got to admire those guys. I
really feel a great deal of pride that uh, when they received the
Presidential Unit Citation for Guadalcanal First Marine Division, that they
gave to all us Coast Guard that were there with 'em. And that was-that
was great. It's an honor. (pause) But...what else can I tell you?

TRAVIS: Uh, the uh..., I think one
thing that, that I admire about the Marine Corps more so then the Coast
Guard, is the fact that they do remember to honor people, and they do have
more of sense of their own history.

EVANS: Yes they do. They have the
greatest esprit de corps. Uh...,I...,You know we have a great
history too, and I...I think we remembered. Uh...they uh...,they...there
were a few good men . They were a small outfit you know, and they, they
could pick and choose.

TRAVIS: Yeah...They still honor you
guys from that--I've seen the displays when September rolls around over at,
at the uh, Marine Corps barracks over by the Pentagon, they still put up...

EVANS: They do?

TRAVIS: Oh yeah.

EVANS: Oh yeah? Well, its uh,
its been a long time ago. A long time ago!

TRAVIS: Tell me a little bit about
what kind of guy Doug was when you first met him at that recruiting station.
What was your --- what kind of impression did you have?

EVANS: Well, (chuckle) Doug was, uh,
outgoing, into everything, interested in everything, uh, fun to be with.
Energetic, uh, kind of uh, physically not uh, not uh, he wasn't frail, but
he's was not robust. He was thin and wiry. But uh, uhm, I
remember when he got pneumonia, and I was really concerned about him.
He ended up in the hospital---Naval Hospital Staten Island for, for a
week. Uh, finally recovered from that. He was subject to uh, uh,
occasionally subject to migraine headaches, and that he'd end up in sickbay
for three or four days. Couldn't fight migraine headaches. But
he was fun to be with.

We had....when we got to New York the, the
New York Worlds Fair was in progress for a year, and every liberty we were
at the fair grounds, and up in White Plans going to the fair. We spent
days on the fairgrounds. Uh, I think we went through every building
there and rode on every ride they had. It was big liberty. Oh
gee! Get off the ship at uh, pier eighteen, and ride the, the bus up
to Saint George to the ferry terminal, take the ferry to the battery, walk
across the battery go into the bar (chuckle) and get a drink (chuckle), and
then go to the fair on the subway! New York was fun in those days.
Uh, I went back, and uh...uh...sometime I was on duty in Houston, along
'bout uh...uh, 60, 1960 after the Amoco Virginia fire in Houston [explosion and fire involving the SS Amoco Virginia and tank barges H.T.
Co. No. 40 and 46 and Gissel1601 and 2001
in Houston Ship channel, 8 November 1959 with loss of life], I went to New
York to a seminar on the fire, and it was a completely different city.
Uh, when we were there we roamed all over town, uh, without uh, without fear
you might say. Uh, when I went back to the seminar they said don't go
out your hotel alone after dark at night, don't walk on the streets, don't
uh, this and that . It was...its a bad deal --- wasn't the New York that I
knew, you know. So, what is it now? Worst now then it was then
even? I don't know. Maybe so.

Don't go out alone, you know, uh. I
remember Times Square on New Years Day when Times Square was full of people
(chuckle), and you just went with the flow, you know. You couldn't
move...you couldn't go any where you wanted to go, you went with the crowd
until you got to the edge, and got out! (chuckle)

TRAVIS: Did you do that with Doug?

EVANS: Yeah, we, we were on Time
Square at New Years, and...and uh,...ha! Oh, that was fun!

TRAVIS: What year was that?

EVANS: That was 1940, I would
imagine-1939? That was New Years of 1940! Must'a been...'cause
we signed-up in, uh, September. Would uh been uh, would uh been
January 1st, 1940.

TRAVIS: Did he have any nicknames?

EVANS: (sigh)...Not really, that I,
that I remember. No.

TRAVIS: I've seen...

EVANS: What?

TRAVIS: No, I've seen pictures of ---
I was, I was just curious 'cause I...I've seen pictures of him, uh, all you
guys I guess. Must have been when you guys were heading over toward
New Zealand. Were you guys, were you guys boxing or wrestling, or...

EVANS: No, no, he did. I didn't.

TRAVIS: He boxed?

EVANS: He tried. (chuckle) He
had, had boxing matches on the uh, Spencer. That, that was on
the cutter. That was before uh,...I think that was...I don't know!
That was not on the, on the transport, I don' think. But, uh, yeah, he
tried to, he tried to be a boxer. I think he taken boxing in college.
He had a year of college, uh, and I guess that's where he did it. I
didn't participate, I was uh, a spectator! (chuckle)

TRAVIS: You're a lover, not a fighter,
huh? (chuckle)

EVANS: No, I tried to be uh, I tried
to be a boxer in uh, in high school --- as a freshman in high school.
And I found out that every time they hit me on the jaw I got a terrific
headache that lasted for three hours! And so since you have a glass
jaw you might just as well not take part. So I took up other things.
I was more of the, I was more of the writer, and a wordsmith, am today.
I guess that's what I am today is a wordsmith. I got that from my dad,
I think. He read the dictionary three times from cover to cover, which
I thought was amazing. He taught himself three new words every week,
and used them so that he would remember how to use them, and what they were,
you know . . .

TRAVIS: Ah!

EVANS: . . . the meanings. And,
I guess, I guess I got that from him.

TRAVIS: Have you done that too?

EVANS: I enjoyed writing essays, and
papers in high school, and it's just gone on from there. I'm a
detail-administrator-type, and pretty good at being an administrator.
That's okay to say, isn't it? (chuckle)

TRAVIS: It is.

EVANS: You should have a certain
amount of self-esteem, and I think I have enough of that! (chuckle)

TRAVIS: That's okay. I boxed
some in high school too. I think that's part of what my problem is
now. (chuckle)

EVANS: No, I, I recall the coach said
I don't think you should do this Mr. Evans, and I said yeah, I agree.
My head hurts! Ha, ha. That was the end of boxing.

TRAVIS: There wasn't--cough!--excuse
me...

EVANS: I tried to play football, too.
I played on the football team. Uh, that wasn't too bad. The made
me a guard. You remember...have you seen pictures the old football
helmets, just the leather helmets with the ear guard?I wore one of those. I was a guard. I did
get a letter in basketball.

TRAVIS: Yeah?

EVANS: That was only because I set on
the bench the whole season, and then in the last game the coach said:
"You go in and go down underneath the goal, and when he throws you the
ball you, make the basket," and I was scared to death. But sure
enough out of all the melee up here here came the ball to me, and I'm all
alone down there. And I throw it up and it goes in, and we win the
game! So I got, I got a letter for Blaine High School.

TRAVIS: And that's in Blaine....

EVANS: ...extent of my sports.

TRAVIS: Blaine High School's in...you
grew up in ...

EVANS: Yeah, I . . .

TRAVIS: After you moved from Cle Elum
where did you move to?

EVANS: Well, Dad went back to
Bellingham, and eventually to Seattle, and . . . at some point in time I
went out to spend a summer on a farm, and end up living with, on a farm for
four years up at Blaine, with the Worthentons. And that's how I got to
Blaine High School.Then I came
back and graduated from Broadway, in my junior and senior year in high
school in Seattle.

TRAVIS: Where, where, what year were
you born?

EVANS: 1921.

TRAVIS: Okay, so your my dad's age.
No actually he's 1920, so he's a year older than you.

EVANS: None! We uh, we did the
lawn, and cut . . . mowed the lawn, worked in the galley. Uh, peeled
potatoes; the usual things that you see in the cartoons. That's the
kind of thing that we did for a week at, at, at the air station.
Helped uh, pushed-in those days the amphibians uh,--you'd...they taxied into
the water, and then you took the wheels off. You, you familiar with
that?

TRAVIS: Yes.

EVANS: And when they land, and come
back in they'd put the nose up on the ramp, and then they'd wade into the
water, and you'd re-attach the wheel, and then they taxi out on a, on a
ramp. Those are the kinds of things we did for, but...I don't know. I
guess we were there ten days before the Spencer came.

TRAVIS: How did you learn your job.
I mean, you did an extraordinary thing at Guadalcanal, but with.., how did
you get trained to do what your doing?

EVANS: As a signalman?

TRAVIS: Well the whole thing.

EVANS: First of all when we got aboard
the Spencer, we were compartment cleaners, ah, that's what we did
until we became signal strikers and when we went up on the bridge we had an
old chief named Mulder who was a first class because every time he made
chief when he'd went on liberty and come back late and they'd bust him back
right to first class and so but he was an excellent teacher and he taught us
to be quartermasters and we essentially taught ourselves to be signalmen.

We'd practice by the hour on the transport
while we were tied up at the dock for instance; we'd go up to the bridge and
sit at one end its a wide bridge you can visualize it --- the bridge
on a transport its maybe 50 feet or 35-40 feet across the bridge we'd sit at
each end of it with the haldis light and send to each other and our
principle of ah of learning was send as fast as you can read what you can if
you constantly send a message faster than the guy can read it he picks up
his speed; pretty soon he is getting more and more of it. That's how
we got built up our speed as signalmen ah but its just a matter of practice.
And then as I said when we....it doesn't take long when you are with the
Marines at Moreshead at at North Carolina you're doing 500 messages a day
and doing semaphore and you're doing flashing light and you're running
signal flags up and down. This is intense ah practice ya know and
pretty soon you get proficient; that's how we learned but we did do a lot of
self teaching where we worked together to get more proficient and, uh, one
of the incentives was, ah, the Navy was always so arrogant and thought they
were so good when we got on the transport we had a Navy chief signalman and
Andy came off of battle wagons; he was a battleship sailor and they were
very proud and their signal gang were very, very proud people. They
constantly tried to beat each other with speed and efficiency and accuracy
and Andy insisted that this Coast Guard signal crew was going to be as good
as a battle-wagon crew and we worked very hard and we got very good

I remember nights sitting at anchor in the
fleet and ah the flag ship would start this 000 business; its an all fleet
message and yard arms would flash 000 for about ten minutes and then the the
message would come and it went to all ships at once and you had to
acknowledge that you received it. Those were really fun days in a way
and exciting so you are taking, you're taking it back a long ways --- excuse
me.

TRAVIS: That's OK! How did you
learn; I mean I don't want to dwell on this but I mean how ah how did you
get the training to even pick up the machine guns and go back in there I
mean if you had been trained a signalman?

EVANS: Well, ah the same kind of
training you get today on a ship I imagine. You learn armament, you go
to classes on on various weapons, ah you go to Cape May, New Jersey and fire
on the range.

TRAVIS: Did you guys do that?

EVANS: Oh yeah, we spent um with the Spencer
tied up to the dock at uh Cape May and and we fired on their range in 1940
and its very interesting to fire on a thousand yard range --- have you ever
tried that? Yeah, it is very interesting everything is wavering in the
heat and you try to get the bull's eye and we fired on the range up here at
Woodbee Island or I have but Cape May was a --- was a learning experience
and as an officer I always tried to be an expert with the .45 at Astoria,
Oregon when I had the buoy tender. The Navy had a little range at the
tip of the island and ah I would go over there oh I guess I made three or
four trips over there trying to make expert and I come within one point.
I never could break into expert with the 4.5. Its a very hard weapon
to master, especially a stock .45.

TRAVIS: 1911 A1-0.

EVANS: It is a wicked weapon to
handle.

TRAVIS: I ah I've got one and I try
and shoot it sometimes but a . . .

EVANS: No, but the training on the
ship was great put us through all that kind of stuff and all the drills.

TRAVIS: I guess he was your best
friend.

EVANS: Yeah, I think so coming I had a
lot of friends in Blain when I came to Seattle ah in my last two years in
high school ah there was one one fellow that I that we kind of palled around
a little bit together but we were never close. And ah I don't know it
seemed it just happened that we became friends and did everything together
went everywhere together went on liberty together ah even took leave
together came out here to the West Coast twice together on ha ha riding the
bus that was no that was a good deal four days and five nights on a bus.

That was kind of interesting; it was a long
ride but it was cheap and that was what we could afford you know and in
those days Greyhound would allow you to ah they had three routes routes
across the country: southern route; central route; and northern route.
If you bought a roundtrip ticket from New York you could come across the
northern route and go back the central route or go back the southern route.
We never did anything but the northern route unfortunately but but ah he and
I just hit it off together and just were friends. Came home on leave
and went skiing in over in Cle Elum together. Uh, I don't know,
just on of those natural things it was a pretty sad day for me when he died.
You never think about dying even in that situation with the war going on and
the bullets flying around you don't really think about it you just do your
job and ah I guess you anticipate that you're going to be okay and then one
day one of you isn't okay. Its ah, its pretty tough.

TRAVIS: The legend has it that his
dying words were asking about the Marines.

EVANS: He wanted to be sure they were
gone....off that's the kind of guy he was he --- he wanted to complete
things. I think he was the one that pushed us in in teaching ourselves
to be good signalmen. He was the pusher perhaps more than I was, he
had the energy and he'd get burned out too. He pushed it so hard he'd
burn himself out and have to recover but, but ah, that's the way Doug was
and he was on that, although we were working together on that he was really
the leader in that and ah, I was glad to be with him and back him up.

TRAVIS: What did he say?

EVANS: He said "did they get
off?" and that's about all he said. And then he died. I
don't think he ever heard me answer him. It was very quick
fortunately. Can we talk about something else?

TRAVIS: Its tough stuff.

EVANS: I knew you were going to bring
this up after all that's part of the story but I've never have had as good a
friend. Not that close. It was a marvelous time of my life, one
I won't forget.

TRAVIS: Pat Sheehan had a picture of
this dashing young signalman winning the Navy Cross.

EVANS: Hmm, well yea, that was
unexpected. I didn't realize that Dwight Dexter had even applied for
an award of any kind until we got back to the States and got to, ah,
Alameda, California and they had this ceremony. There is always a
funny story attached to everything. Headquarters had mailed the Navy
Cross from Headquarters to [ Vice
] Admiral [ Joseph E. ] Stika [ USCG ] who was then the commanding
officer of the Coast Guard Training Station Alameda. It didn't arrive
so he had his Navy Cross pinned on me in the ceremony and then [ he ] gave
me the bar out of his box that it comes in, [ he ] gave me the bar to wear
and he became a friend. And we visited the admiral, he retired, he
lived in Dallas and ah we visited him a couple of times, Dorothy and I, as
we were going back and forth across the country. We'd stop in Dallas
and he often lamented the fact that we were about the only Coast Guard
people of all his Coast Guard friends and associates that ever stopped and
see him. They would call him up and say we came through Dallas but ah
we didn't have time. You know this is sad --- he was a great guy.
Admiral Stika, but ah that was that was a surprise to me.

The other thing that I have to tell
you....another interesting anecdote. I came off Guadalcanal with
malaria so bad [ that ] they take me to New Caledonia and they dumped me on
Admiral [ William F. ] Halsey's flagship which was anchored in the middle of
Caledonia harbor; that's were he ran the South Pacific from. That was
his headquarters. They said it had been sitting there at anchor so
long it was aground on coffee grounds ah about the second or third day!
I was there; now I'm a first class signalman at this point the second or
third day I'm there I'm called down to the office and said ah Admiral Halsey
is giving you a field ah ah field promotion to ah chief signalman --- the
Coast Guard never heard of a field promotion, never done, that they didn't
even know what that was. I'm not sure they were too happy with Admiral
Halsey. So the only chief petty officers coat I could find to wear
coming back to the States was a carpenter's [ mate ] so I wore left armed
chief carpenter's rate all the way back to the states and khakis until I
could get to Treasure Island in San Francisco and buy a uniform.
Ha-ha, funny things that happen. Funny things that happen.

TRAVIS: Did he pin it on you himself?

EVANS: No, no they just they just
called me down the office and advised me that he had. . . .

TRAVIS: Did you meet him?

EVANS: I met him but it was very brief
--- he was a no nonsense guy. He was a great, great leader.

TRAVIS: Lived up to his nickname?
"Bull" Halsey?

EVANS: Oh yeah, absolutely.

TRAVIS: How did you become an officer?

EVANS: I came back to the states and
reported [and then] went on leave. Dorothy and I were married--it was in
May and, in fact, Saturday is our anniversary. Went back to San Francisco
and they told me that in the meantime Commander Dexter has been recovering;
he was very sick when he came back from the South Pacific and he spent a
long time in convalescence. Then when he came back to duty he became
personnel officer for the Twelfth District.

So
I was instructed that the personnel officer in the Twelfth District wanted
to see me and I go up there and its my old boss. We greeted each other and
talked for a minute and he reached in his desk drawer and pulled out a
letter and said I want you to sign this letter -- the Coast Guard needs
communications officers and you are a great candidate and so he said I have
written a letter recommending you for a temporary commission as an ensign. I
had no college; I had nothing, you know. I was just a high school graduate
and he convinced me I finally signed the letter.

(Right: CDR Evans in 1992)

I became--I was waiting for reassignment
and I heard that the recruiting office in Denver needed a chief petty
officer so I requested it. And he called me into his office and said you
don't want to go to Denver. I said yes, I can't think of a better
place to go after the South Pacific to just relax you know so okay, I go to
Denver. Dotty and I got a place to stay and rented a little apartment.
I'm there for and the officer in charge is a warrant officer named Barnet.
We got along just fine he and I.

About six weeks later I get a call from San
Francisco from Commander Dexter. I think then he's a, I don't know if he was
a captain then or not but anyway, he says I'm sending your commission up by
mail and you'll have to have a change of command apparently. Okay, I
said what does this entail? Well, he said you will get orders to Yorktown
for 90-day "wonder school." He said you will have to go
through indoctrination. I said don't send the commission up here I don't
want it! He said what do you mean -- I said I'm not going down to
Yorktown and going through 90-day wonder school after coming out of the
South Pacific -- you can forget it. I don't want the commission -- yes
you do and you'll go -- no I won't! He said well we will see about
that and we hung up. The commission came but the orders never came.
So Barnet and I held a very friendly change of command ceremony and I became
his boss and we went right on working together. Then I got transferred to a
to a ASW school in Florida to man a frigate and I was in one of the reserve
crews so we never got on the frigate and instead I got orders to one of the
new General-Class -- I mean the new Admiral-class transports, the big
512-footers, as the U.S.S. Admiral [William] Capps [AP-120]. Reported there as an assistant communications officer and
when we got to Hollandia, New Guinea ran into Barnet who was a chief
engineer on a tug.